r home, Mr.
Bobbsey went back to his own family, and told his wife, Flossie, Freddie
and Nan what had happened.

"Oh, I'm so glad Helen is all right," said Mrs. Bobbsey.

"But it's too bad about her doll," sighed Nan. She had a doll of her
own--a fine one--and she knew how she would feel if that had been taken.

"Helen's doll could talk," said Flossie. "I know, 'cause she let me make
it talk one day. You wind up a winder thing in her back, and then you
push on a shoe button thing in her front and she says 'Mamma' and 'Papa'
and other things."

"Yes, that's right," said Nan. "Mollie is a talking doll. I guess she
has a little phonograph inside her. Maybe that's the noise Johnnie heard
when the gypsy man carried the doll past him, and Johnnie thought it was
Helen crying."

"I guess that was it," agreed Mr. Bobbsey.

"Well, it's too bad to lose a big talking doll. I must see what I can do
to help get it back. I'll call up the chief of police."

"It would be worse to lose your toy fire engine," declared Freddie.

"Why, Freddie Bobbsey!" exclaimed his little sister, "nothing could be
worse than to lose your very best doll--your very own child!"

Mr. Bobbsey, being one of the most prominent business men in the town,
had considerable business at times with the police and the fire
departments, and the officers would do almost anything to help him or
his friends.

So, after supper--at which Dinah had served the pudding with the
shaved-up maple sugar over the top, Flossie and Freddie each having had
two helpings--Mr. Bobbsey called up the police station and asked if
anything more had been heard of the gypsies.

"Well, yes, we did hear something of them," answered Chief Branford,
over the telephone wire. "They've gone into camp, where they always do,
on the western shore of the lake, and as I've had several reports of
small things having been stolen around town, I'm going to send on
officer out there to the gypsy camp, and have him see what he can find.
You say they took your little girl's doll?"

"No, not my little girl's," answered Mr. Bobbsey, "but the talking doll
belonging to a friend of hers."

"Her name is Molly, Daddy," said Flossie, who, with the other Bobbsey
twins, was listening to her father talk over the telephone. "I mean the
doll's name is Mollie, not Helen's name."

"I understand," said Mr. Bobbsey with a laugh, and he told the chief the
name of the doll and also the name of the little girl who own